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Tongue bifurcation, splitting or forking, is a type of body modification in which the tongue is cut centrally from its tip to as far back as the underside base, forking the end. In the late 1990s tongue splitting was almost unheard of, but is now considered a common alteration among body modification enthusiasts.
There are several methods used to spit tongues; cutting with a scalpel, cauterizing and tying off. It is performed by oral surgeons, plastic surgeons, body modification practitioners or done by the person themself, but only the oral and plastic surgeons are licensed. Before splitting with any method, some choose have a well healed tongue piercing where the back end of the split is intended to be. This ideally prevents the tongue from healing forward from the back of the cut, which would result in a split that is not as deep as desired.

The tongue generally heals in 1–2 weeks, during which time the person may have difficulty with speech or their normal dietary habits. Splitting is reversible but the reversal is even more painful than the tongue splitting procedure.

After the tongue is split and the sides healed, control over the individual sides can be gained with practice. The two halves can be raised up and down opposite each other, spread apart from the other half which makes the split quite apparent and some objects can be grasped onto and held. A spit tongue is an easy body modification to conceal with a little effort. Keeping the tongue in the mouth and the two halves pressed together when speaking can keep the split out of view. When the two sides are held together, it appears as tho there is only a deep crevice in the center of the tongue. Some people have found it more difficult to speak clearly after having their tongue split, but with a little practice most have worked past and overcome any speech issues the split may be attributed to.

For most people talking on a mobile phone, cooking dinner in the microwave or driving in a car is simply part of modern living in 21st century Britain. But completing any such tasks is impossible for Debbie Bird - because she is allergic to Cell Phones and Microwaves.

The 39-year-old is so sensitive to the electromagnetic field (emf) or 'smog' created by computers, mobile phones, microwave ovens and even some cars, that she develops a painful skin rash and her eyelids swell to three times their size if she goes near them. As a consequence, Mrs Bird, a health spa manager, has transformed her home into an EMF-free zone to try and stay healthy. 'I can no longer do things that I used to take for granted,' Mrs Bird said. "My day-to-day life has been seriously affected by EMF".

The bizarre paper describing the case reads: "A 22-year-old woman sought medical care for a lesion in the plantar region of her left foot, a well-formed nipple surrounded by areola and hair. The patient underwent an incisional biopsy of the lesion. Histologic findings were squamous epithelium with hyperkeratosis, epithelial hyperplasia without atypia, epithelial cytoplasmic vacuolation, and hyperpigmentation of the epidermal basal membrane. In the dermis there were hair follicles, eccrine glands, and sebaceous glands. Fibrosis and fat tissue were noted at the base of the lesion. No glandular tissue was identified.Clinical and histopathologic findings were consistent with the diagnosis of supernumerary breast tissue, also known as pseudomamma. To our knowledge, this is the first report of supernumerary breast tissue on the foot."

17-year-old Jésica Santillán died 2 weeks after receiving the heart and lungs of a patient whose blood type did not match hers. Doctors at the Duke University Medical Center failed to check the compatibility before surgery began. . After a rare second transplant operation to attempt to rectify the error, she suffered brain damage and complications that subsequently hastened her death.

Santillán, a Mexican immigrant, had come to the United States three years before to seek medical treatment for a life-threatening heart condition. The heart-lung transplant that surgeons at Duke University Hospital in Durham, N.C., hoped would improve this condition instead put her in greater danger; Santillán, who had type-O blood, had received the organs from a type-A donor.

The error sent the patient into a comalike state, and she died shortly after an attempt to switch the organs back out for compatible ones failed. The hospital blamed human error for the death, along with a lack of safeguards to ensure a compatible transplant. According to reports, Duke reached an agreement on an undisclosed settlement with the family. Neither the hospital nor the family is allowed to comment on the case.

Jordan Taylor was in a car accident that separated his skull from his vertebrae. There was no connection between the bones of the neck and the head. Doctors call the injury an "orthopedic decapitation" and at the time gave Jordan a one percent chance for survival.

The tissue may have been destroyed, but the faith of Jordan's family was intact. Word about what happened to Jordan spread to the family's church and others churches across the country. Jordan's mother says at one time she knew of at least 20 churches that were praying for her son.

Dr. Roberts reconnected Jordan's head to his neck with a metal plate, screws and titanium rods. 3 months after the accident, Jordan left the hospital and is now back at school.

Martin Jones, a 42-year-old builder, was left blind after an accident at work more than a decade ago. But a remarkable operation - which implants part of his tooth in his eye - has pierced his world of darkness. The procedure, performed fewer than 50 times before in Britain, uses the segment of tooth as a holder for a new lens grafted from his skin.

He lost his sight after a tub of white hot aluminium exploded in his face at work in a scrapyard. He suffered 37 per cent burns and had to wear a special body stocking for 23 hours a day. He also had his left eye removed. But surgeons were able to save the right eye, even though he was unable to see through it. At first specialists in Nottingham tried to save his sight using stem cells from a donor but the attempt failed.

It was only when a revolutionary new operation was pioneered at the Sussex Eye Clinic in Brighton that he was given a chance to have his sight back. During the procedure, a minute section of a patient's tooth is removed, reshaped and chiselled through to grip the man-made lens which is then placed in its core. It is implanted under an eyelid where it becomes covered in tissue.

The process requires a living tooth as an implant because doctors suggest there are chances the eye would reject a plastic equivalent. So a canine - which is the best option due to its shape and size - was taken out of Mr Jones' mouth. A patch of skin is then taken from the inside of the cheek and placed in the eye for two months, where it gradually acquires its own blood supply. The tooth segment is finally transplanted into the eye socket. The flap of grafted skin is then partially lifted from the eye and placed over its new sturdy base.

Mr Jones, from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, was able to see for the first time his wife Gill, 50, whom he had married four years ago.

Katrina Burgess, 17, was told by doctors she may never walk again after surviving a 70mph car crash with a broken neck and back, and a catalogue of other injuries. But after being put back together with 11 metal rods and enough pins and screws to send an airport security detector into overdrive, Katrina was signed up by a modeling agency.

Surgeons saved her life after her car left the M5 and crashed into a ditch as she travelled towards her home town of Weymouth, Dorset. She snapped her back, punctured both lungs and broke her neck, her pelvis, her left leg and several ribs. Surgeons at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton, Somerset, said that without surgery to help the bones to fuse, her spinal injuries in particular could deteriorate, risking death.

Doctors inserted a rod from her hip to her knee in her left leg the day after she was admitted to hospital. It was secured inside with four titanium pins. The most risky operation came a week later. They sliced open her back and inserted six more horizontal rods up the length of her back to support her spine. A week after that, they inserted a titanium screw to the top of her spine to support the break in her fragile neck. Only a day after the last operation she was able to take her first steps.

Astonishingly, five months on from the crash, the teenager has recovered to the point where she no longer even needs painkillers.

Australian surgeons saved the feet of a baby in the womb in 2008 by performing what is believed to be the earliest in-utero surgery of its kind in the world. Constricting bands were cutting off the blood to Leah Bowlen's feet when her mother was 22-weeks pregnant. Amniotic bands were cut by delicate surgery from above the ankles of the unborn baby. Amniotic band syndrome or amniotic disruption complex is a congenital limb abnormality. The condition occurs in between one in 12,000 and one in 15,000 live births. Without the ground-breaking surgery, little Leah would have been born with no feet. Now, there is only an indentation mark around her ankle to indicate the problem that was rectified.

Rhett Lamb is often cranky like any other 3-year-old toddler, but there’s one thing that makes him completely different: he has a rare medical condition in which he can’t sleep a wink.
Rhett is awake nearly 24 hours a day, and his condition has baffled his parents and doctors for years. They took clock shifts watching his every sleep-deprived mood to determine what ailed the young boy.
After dozens of doctors' visits and years of conflicting opinions, Rhett was finally diagnosed with a rare brain condition called chiari malformation.
Chiari malformation is a neurological disorder in which the bottom part of the brain, the cerebellum, descends out of the skull and crowds the spinal cord, putting pressure on both the brain and spine, causing a number of symptoms, including sleeplessness.
Once diagnosed, doctors were able to perform a risky surgery that offered a 50-50 chance Rhett would be able to sleep normally for the first time.

Teenager Ashleigh Morris can't go swimming, soak in a hot bath or enjoy a shower after a stressful day's work - she's allergic to water. Even sweating brings the 19-year-old out in a painful rash.

Ashleigh, from Melbourne, Australia, is allergic to water of any temperature, a condition she's lived with since she was 14. She suffers from an extremely rare skin disorder called Aquagenic Urticaria - so unusual that only a handful of cases are documented worldwide.

Marlie Casseus is a girl from Haiti, whose life was normal until the age of 14, when her face went completely unrecognizable and frighteningly disfigured because of a strange disease. As a result, not only she suffered physical pain but emotional anguish for being rejected by her friends and neighbors. The reason is a rare form of polyostotic fibrous dysplasia, a genetic disease that causes the sufferer's bones to become swollen and as soft as jelly. Not only she suffered the deformation of her face but she was about to go blind due to the pressure of the tumor on her eye sockets.
Fortunately, the Haitian nonprofit Good Samaritan organization helped bring Marlie to the United States. And doctors at Jackson Memorial Medical Center in Miami could evaluate her condition. The hospital's International Kids Fund, began collecting money for her operation. Donations came from all over the world and even doctors donated their time to perform the surgery on the girl.

It took 17 hours to remove the growth of both parts of her face. Afterwards she was breathing on her own in stable condition at Holtz Children's Hospital. The surgery involved first, removing the mass of bone and jelly; then inserting metal plates to reconstruct Marlie's lower eye sockets; and finally reconstructing the interior of her nose. The photographs above show the miraculous result.

A weird baby is born in Gilgit, Pakistan, this March’ 2010. The baby had a skin disorder whose first case was registered back in 1700s. The baby was kept in ICU after his birth because of his weak and dreadful condition and the parents of the baby have been declared healthy. Soon after the birth of the alien baby, the huge mass of people gathered at the hospital to see the strange child and which astonished the people. Baby had red stripes all over his body exactly like a tiger and had blood red eyes similar to aliens from a sci-fi ALIEN based movie. According to the doctor, there are only 10 percent chances that the baby would survive as the skin disease he is diagnosed with (Harlequin-type ichthyosis) makes him more sensitive towards bacteria to enter his body. This kind of disease is very rare and not been reported since 1700 but now it has captured the interest of people and astounded them to a great extent.

Harlequin-type ichthyosis, a skin disease, is the most severe form of congenital ichthyosis, characterized by a thickening of the keratin layer in fetal human skin. In sufferers of the disease, the skin contains massive, diamond-shaped scales, and tends to have a reddish color. In addition, the eyes, ears, mouth, and other appendages may be abnormally contracted. The scaly keratin greatly limits the child’s movement. Because the skin is cracked where normal skin would fold, it is easily pregnable by bacteria and other contaminants, resulting in serious risk of fatal infection.

Lali was born with two noses, two pairs of lips and two pairs of eyes – but only two ears. And while she may seem like an oddity to some, her proud parents think she is simply a God reincarnated. Her parents, Vinod and Susham Singh from a village called Saini, said their little girl was “a gift from God”.

The girl is born with Diprosopus or Craniofacial Duplicatiopn - an extremely rare congenital disorder whereby part or all of the face is duplicated on the head as compared to polycephaly in which a baby might be born with two heads, in which one head is a left over of his undeveloped twin.

Doctors who delivered the baby said she appeared to be in good health, and is leading a normal life with no breathing difficulties. They were initially uncertain whether the baby would have normal functions but say so far she is “doing well” and eating from both of her two mouths. She also opens and shuts all four eyes at the same time.

Jessie Hall is a 6-year-old girl from Aledo, Texas, who underwent surgery at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center to remove the right half of her brain and stop her seizures. She has Rasmussen's encephalitis - a progressive inflammatory disease that was destroying the right side of her brain - and is a patient of Eileen Vining, M.D., Director of the Pediatric Epilepsy Center. Her surgery was successfully performed on June 11th, 2008 by world-renowned neurosurgeon Ben Carson, M.D. The radical procedure – called a hemispherectomy – is supposed to make her seizure-free.

Jessie had her first seizure while eating a sandwich aboard a boat on Lake Texana in her home state of Texas. She had her second in kindergarten that September of 2007. Her seizures began to increase in severity and number. Her parents brought her to Hopkins Children's and into the care of its pediatric epilepsy program.

When a baby girl was born in rural India with four arms and four legs, she was thought to be a gift from God, and was given the name Lakshmi, after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth. Doctors found that Lakshmi actually had a twin, which had failed to fully develop, and had fused to her body.

A team of doctors were assembled, and they performed 27 hour surgery to remove the limbs, kidney and spinal cord from her twin. Then they re-oriented the girl's genital system and bladder, and closed her pelvis. Lakshmi made a miraculous recovery, and just three months after her operation, she was able to walk with a walker.

This baby born in Iran six months ago, currently weighs an enormous 20 kilos (44 pounds)! The parents say the baby was born a normal weight close to 8 pounds when he was born, but he keeps eating every hour. The Iranian doctors do not know what this eating disorder is or where it came from.

This 2-month-old baby named Liu Junjie from Anhui Province, China, was born with a third arm on 2006. Doctors successfully removed the extremely rare and well-developed third arm, but the baby required long-term physical therapy to gain function in his remaining hand, which has no palm and flexes in either direction. "We're hoping to exchange information with doctors who've dealt with similar cases anywhere in the world," said Chen, head of the orthopedics department at Shanghai Children's Medical Center. "This is so rare that we have virtually no information to go on."

On 2006, this baby was born with a only one eye in India. Medical staff who helped deliver the child believe that the child's condition was caused by an experimental anti-cancer drug. Another cause written in the report by the hospital was that it could also be the result of a chromosomal disorder. The child was diagnosed with a rare chromosomal disorder, known as cyclopia. She was born with a single eye in the center of her forehead, no nose and her brain fused into a single hemisphere. With such severe deformities, it was a miracle that the girl survived even a few minutes after delivery. The baby died days later.

On October 24th 2006, Amillia Taylor was born at 21 weeks and six days. No baby born at less than 23 weeks gestation had ever survived, but 10 ounce Amillia was able to pull through (and even was trying to breath and cry on her own at birth). Hospitals had initially hoped to release her yesterday, but decided to keep the now healthy baby a few extra days for observation.

Her mother doesn't mind the wait, she's just proud and happy that Amillia is healthy: "Even though she's only four pounds (1.8 kilos) now, she's plump to me."

On 2006, this bizarre-looking baby was born in Charikot, the headquarters of Dolakha district, attracting a huge number of onlookers to witness the astonishing sight.

The neck-less baby with its head almost totally sunk into the upper part of the body and with extraordinarily large eyeballs literally popping out of the eye-sockets, was born to Nir Bahadur Karki and Suntali Karki at the Gaurishnkar Hospital in Charikot. The Karki couple is a permanent resident of Dolakha's Bhirkot VDC.

The bizarre baby, however, died after half an hour of its birth, Suntali, the mother, informed. It was taken to the hospital after its death. The news about such a baby being brought to the hospital spread like wildfire and there were hundreds gathered at the hospital to have a look. The police had to be deployed to control the crowd.

The baby weighed 2kg at birth and was born after the normal nine-month gestation period. Suntali, already a mother of two normal daughters, was not suffering from any illness during the pregnancy. Nir Bahadur, the father, says he does not feel any remorse for the newly-born baby's death. "I am happy that nothing happened to my wife," he said.